Two years had already passed since Maul and his army of criminals had stolen the three huge ships from the Republic. That had been the tipping point of war.

Even though every one saw it as a war, the Republic seemed never to acknowledge it as one. Twenty years after the Clone Wars had come to an end, the last thing the Republic wanted was another war to destroy themselves in.

Despite having no publicity as a war, all Jedi knew it as one. Maul and his criminal army were no longer shy about attacking the Jedi. Before having aquired massive destructing ship, Maul had played his cards very close, he usually only stuck to small heists, looting from the Jedi and Republic in small ways. However, all of these came to a fruitful harvest when Maul claimed those three Jedi Cruisers.

With these cruisers in tow, he finally had decent ships which stood a chance against other Jedi ships. And of course, since he owned the black market, Maul stocked his three cruisers with the latest and deadliest weapons he could get his hands on.

Mauls tactics were admirable even though he was malicious. Even though he was now the most hated man in the galaxy, he was smarter than most people and the Jedi had to admit that he was resourceful.

What had started out as three Jedi Cruisers, turned into a small fleet of ships as Maul captured bigger and more impressive ships. Maul knew his ambitions well. He stuck mostly to the outter rim of planets, all of which were controlled by the Crime Sindicates; all controlled by him.

Even before the Clone Wars, the Republic and the Jedi were werrie of the outter rim as it was incredibly hostile towards them. Now it would be suicide to even consider sending a Jedi to one of the planets governed by the Crime Leaders. Maul knew the Jedi wouldn't be able reach him in the outter rim, so he stuck mostly to those planets, knowing he was out of reach for any of his enemies.

Using his fleet of ships, Maul targeted vulnerable Republic planets which were close to the outter rim and so cut off from any help. After taking over the government of the planet, Maul would establish his own leaders, loyal to only him. Any valuables and ships would then belong to him, so not only would he gain territory, he would gain weapons to add to his ever growing pile.

Then there was his mysterious apprentice.

No one knew her name yet but since that first incident on Corellia, reports from Jedi kept coming in about Maul's loyal assassin. As Luke had described her, she was always seen with long red hair and a purple lightsaber in hand.

The Jedi Counsil had very little intell on Maul's plans. It was rather hard to spy on Maul's forces when most people were afraid of him to ever disobey him. But that didn't mean the Jedi were totally in the dark.

Out of all the mysteries accompanying Maul, one was the most confusing. There were hushed mentions of some 'Project Krystal' but there wasn't enough intell to know what it was, only that Maul had been channelling his focus into that project for nearly three years already.

The Jedi Counsil had recently gotten a report that Maul's personal War Cruiser was on the move again. To avoid being pinpointed, Maul made sure to continuously move from one base to the next on different planets and each time, he took his most powerful ship. However, it might have been the most powerful ship in his arsenal, but in order not to be detected, he was forced to leave his fleet behind meaning the Jedi only had a select amount of time to catch Maul at his most vulnerable. They knew they had to intercept him whilst he was changing bases so they had to leap on this opportunity.

The reports of his movements were out of the ordinary as Maul was usually never this careless with his migration from planet to planet, but the Jedi couldn't afford to throw away the opportunity to pounce at him and finally take him down.

Anakin, Ahsoka, Obi-Wan and the twins were in the ship closest to Maul's and so they were alerted immediately.

Luckily for them, Maul's ship seemed to be traveling through a nebula. The nebula itself was harmless but really scrabbled the scanners of big ships, especially when it came to little ships like fighters. An added bonus of the nebula scrambling their scanners would be that Maul's ship could hold anything in a tractor beam.

So they couldn't sail their Jedi Cruiser right up to Maul as he would be able to see them on the scanner and overpower them easily. However, if they flew in fighters through the cloud of gas, they could go in undetected and try to rig the ship. If they could weaken the war ship's forcefield by the fuel tanks at the back, a few shots to ignite the coaxium would cause the ship to explode. It sounded easy in principle.

In reality however...

"Luke! Watch your flank!" Anakin yelled down the com as he spun past his son who was being chased by fighter droids.

"Could use a little help here, SkyGuy!" Ahsoka said in a panic, sparks coming from her own fighter where she had been hit in the left wing.

"I'll add you to the list, Snips. Obi-Wan, you're fighter can't take much more," Anakin replied, trying to juggle multiple predicaments at one time.

"Don't worry about me," Kenobi retorted, trying to sound sarcastic and calm even though his former padawan was right; his fighter had taken quite a beating, prompting him to mutter, "I really do hate flying..."

The pinkish haze that was the nebula did little to disguise the hectic dog fight which had broken out when the Jedi had opened fire on the ship. All in all, the plan had gone well, for all of five seconds.

Though ships couldn't detect them, they failed to account for the tracking droids attached to Maul's cruiser. In fairness, they hadn't been there last time the Jedi encounter Maul's ship.

With a War Cruiser now firing blindly into the nebulas to try and hit them, and the droids hurling after them, they had scattered, all trying to find a way to shake off the droids and avoid the blaster fire.

"He have to retreat!" Anakin concluded, trying to calculate a safe path out of the nebula and towards the Jedi Cruiser.

"But it could be months before another opportunity-" Luke started but was promptly interrupted by the senior Skywalker.

"No, Luke, do as you're told for once!" Anakin snapped, "Son, look around, this is no longer a stealth attack mission, it's a rescue mission and we're rescuing ourselves!"

With no more complaints, all the Jedi tried to escape the droids before they even attempted to reattach their ships to the hyperspace rings which would allow then to make a quick getaway.

"The path we need to take through hyperspace is going to be tight through the nebula so I'm afraid one at a time it is. Ahsoka, go now!"

Doing as she was told, Ahsoka attached her rather worse for wear fighter to a ring and shot out at lightspeed.

Anakin was about to follow after that as he was second to get to the rings. Just as he activated lightspeed, his coms went off again.

"Dad! Ahhh!" Was all he heard as Leia's coms were shut off; having already pressed lightspeed, he was off before he could even respond to his daughter's shouts of horror.

Luke and Obi-Wan, however, turned their fighters round, forgetting the hyperspace rings as they followed to where Leia's signal cut off.

"Leia!" Luke yelled down the coms, "Leia!"

To their horror, Leia's fighter was drifting aimlessly in space, with sparks flying off it where she had obviously been shot in the flank. As they neared, they were relieved to see through the glass cockpit that she was still there. All power to her ship was deactivated so when she looked up through the glass at Luke and Obi-Wan, she frantically slapped at the glass in a panic, silently screaming for help.

"Luke, we cannot delay," Obi-Wan hastened, "The droids are closing in on us and we cannot take another battering of those things."

"Well we can't leave my sister here to die!" Luke shot back, not even trying to hold in the panic at seeing his sister helpless in her own ship.

"Of course not, but either we find a solution quick or-"

His thoughts were interrupted as the droids were already on them quicker than expected. Both Jedi made to maneuver their fighters to a better vantage point but Luke's fighter took a bolt to the wing and spiraled out of control, hitting Obi-Wan's ship, sending then both out of control and crashing.

Their visions were blurred at the erratic movements their fighters were making as they soared through the nebula, the pink haze lifting, meaning they had come out of it. Unable to keep control anymore, the two plummeted towards the nearest planet.

Obi-Wan had just enough sense to check which planet they would be crashing on, before his controls sparked out.

Tatooine.

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